Air travelers should brace for more delays on Monday

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Brady Landherr, 4, climbs on his father, Eric, attempting to find a way back to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at the domestic terminal at San Francisco Airport Sunday morning July 7, 2013, one day after the crash of an Asiana Airlines jet forced the closure of two runways. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Air travelers could face continued delays around California airports on Monday, even as San Francisco International Airport officials planned to re-open one of its two shuttered runways on Sunday.

Mineta San Jose International Airport received another 12 flights on Sunday that had been diverted from San Francisco International Airport and passengers should expect heavier-than-normal traffic on Monday.

While not as chaotic as Saturday, San Jose International also saw an unusually high number of passengers who presumably were returning from the Fourth of July weekend, airport spokeswoman Vicki Day said.

Airport officials were unsure whether to expect more SFO-diverted flights on Monday, but plan on seeing even more post-Fourth of July travelers, Day said.

Passengers flying into and out of San Jose on Monday should check with their airlines, she said.

Brian Kidd, spokesman for Oakland International Airport, said on Monday the airport will “definitely be ramping up again. You’ve got to check airline by airline.”

Oakland did not receive any diverted flights from SFO on Sunday. But JetBlue airline decided to fly two flights out of Oakland instead of San Francisco, which required the airline to shuttle passengers across the Bay, Kidd said.

At Los Angeles International Airport, several SFO-bound flights again were canceled on Sunday and harried and tired passengers sometimes ran through the airport trying to get a flight out.

Natalie Alund, a reporter for this newspaper, said the scene was even more chaotic than Saturday, when Alund’s flight to SFO was canceled.

On Sunday, she was stuck on the tarmac inside an SFO-bound flight for nearly an hour because the pilot said air traffic controllers in San Francisco would not let the plane take off as scheduled.

Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crashed Saturday on Runway 28L, which remained littered with debris and closed on Sunday.

But Runway 28R — one of SFO’s four runways — will reopen by day’s end, airport officials said.

In both the domestic and international San Francisco terminals, passengers who were served with cancellations and delays scrambled to find alternative ways home.

Passengers saw delays several hours long, and in some cases, they will have been at the airport for more than 24 hours by the time they fly out. Many were taking the delays in stride, noting the perspective provided by the crash that killed two and injured more than 100 others, some critically.

“You have to roll with it,” said Amber Wood, an Illinois resident trying to fly to Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

That’s a tall order for Wood, who is traveling with three children after vacationing in the Bay Area for the past week. She arrived at the airport expecting that at worst they would have to deal with a two-and-a-half hour delay.

Try two days. And that’s after looking for a flight on another airline; her original carrier didn’t have anything home-bound for a week.

“It impacts us greatly, trying to get back to jobs and things like that,” Wood said. “But (the crash) instantly puts things into perspective.”

James Truesdale came to the airport for a Saturday evening flight after his carrier told him that his plane would take off as scheduled, perhaps with a slight delay.

He and his girlfriend ended up taxiing and then parking, stranded on a London-bound plane for nearly eight hours before they were let back into the international terminal. A fuel leak was partly to blame, he was told.

“They kept saying in 15 to 20 minutes we’ll be ready,” Truesdale said, adding that promise was made ad nauseam. “We weren’t allowed to move for two solid hours.”

By the time he was to leave Sunday, he will have spent a full day lounging in the terminal. Like the others, he was tired and exasperated, but still remarkably patient given what had transpired Saturday.

“These things happen, and there’s nothing you can do,” Truesdale said. “I just want to get home.”

Robert Salonga covers crime and public safety for the Bay Area News Group and is based at The Mercury News. A San Jose native, he has a bachelor's degree from UCLA and a Master's degree in journalism from the University of Maryland-College Park, but remains a Bruin at heart. His prior reporting stops include Washington, D.C. and Salinas. He is also a middling triathlete whose sole race goal is to be upright at the end. Contact Robert at 408-920-5002.

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